What would you like to know about Melocactus?

[Vic]

Welcome to the forum Marlon, I hope you enjoy it and I'm sure your wealth of knowledge will be of great benefit to all.

I don't grow any Melocacti but enjoyed looking at your fantastic photos.

Come on John let's see this pic of your rear end!!:D

[DaveW]

I too run a cold greenhouse but just bring the dozen or so tender plants, including my Melocactus into the house overwinter. They seem OK if you keep them in the window, but bring them inside the room when you close the curtains overnight.

DaveW

[Bill]

Hi Marlon

Welcome to the forum. Not that melo myself, a bit laid back maybe(:D

[Angie]

Hi Marlon,

Nice to see you on the forum. As you know, I have all my Euphorbias indoors on the windowsill and not much space for cacti which need a lot more heat, like so many other people here.
Maybe it would be a good idea if you could tell us which are the most tolerant species of Melocactus and easiest to grow over here.

Your selection of photographs is excellent as usual :-).

[John E]

we wont go down that road Vic. Ladies of a nervous disposition may looking. Suffice to say bits of trouser, boxer shorts and skin were to be found in the shale after a pretty hairy decent.
John E

[Vic]

Sounds painful John!:X

[Julie]

Welcome to the madhouse Marlon, and thanks for the great photos!

It makes me feel sad and angry that the multicephalus is no longer found because it's been stolen from the wild just for ???.

I've never seen one before. Do they exist for sale?

I don't have a greenhouse, just a cold sill which faces west. It gets full sun from 1pm to sunset... when the sun shines! (ha ha).

If there is one species who can survive a room which gets to 16 C at night, and cope with less light away from the window (the sill goes to 10 C, and I may be away and unable to move the plant...) please advise me of it.

Preferably something which stays quite small... I won't have a large living space for some years to come. So I stick to the little stuff... like Conos.

[Trevor]

JOHNS END !!

Sorry John, I actually saw this just the other day, so it was fresh (burnt ?) in my mind...

Okay returning to normal programming now...
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[Marlon Machado]

Thanks to all for the very warm welcome! Some comment on specific messages below:

Dave,

Thank you for your suggestion about making a workable key to Melocactus. Species of this genus are indeed very similar to each other, and sometimes difficult to tell apart. And to make matters worse, seedlings and juvenile plants without cephalium can look very different from mature plants. For some species, their most distinguishing characteristics are found in the flowers and fruits, and it can be rather difficult to identify to which species belong young juvenile specimens that lack a cephalium. And on top of all, there is also the problem that the characteristics of the plants change in cultivation - the spines may not develop as strongly, the body color can be different, the plant may become more elongated than in nature.

I will try to make a key to the Melocactus species that I will discuss in the article - those from Eastern Brazil. Unfortunately I am not familiar enough with the species from outside Brazil to include them in the key, and thus the key will not be perfect.

Trevor,

Thanks for your message. Rudolf is a great guy, and I am very grateful to the incentive he gave me when I started studying cacti more seriously. The making of the Uebelmannia book was quite something, I learned a lot. I was very inexperienced at the time, but Rudolf believed in me, and proposed that we make the Uebelmannia book together.

Chile is also a great place to visit, I went there in 2001 together with John Ede, Paul Klaassen and Leo van der Hooven, we had a great time. In the future I wish to make another visit to Chile. Three must see places: the colonies of Copiapoa dealbata at Carrizal Bajo, the army of Copiapoa columna-alba near Esmeralda, and the plants of Copiapoa cinerea in the mountains above Taltal. Ah, and of course Copiapoa krainziana at San Ramon!

Back to the Melocacti, they are actually not very fussy to grow from seed, provided that the seed is new - old seed more than one or two years old is difficult to germinate. The seedlings enjoy warmth and lots of water - you can almost cultivate them hydroponically, if temperatures are high enough.

Post a picture of your would be azureus, and I will try to identify the ugly duckling.

By the way, Melocactus melocactoides is a synonymous of Melocactus violaceus, so you probably have two batches of seedlings of the same plant under different names.

Julie,

Yes, it is sad that the population of the M. ernestii multicephalus is basically gone. The first time I visited it, the place had dozens of plants, most mature plants with at least two or three cephalia, some plants with over ten cephalia! Also, the population had a number of cristate individuals. But since then every time I visited the place it had fewer plants, and on one occasion I arrived there and I could not find anything anymore. The owner of the land, curious to see people wandering in the rocks in his property, came to ask us what we were doing (I was visiting the place with John Hughes at the time). After explaining that we were there to photograph the cacti, I asked him what had happened to the plants that grew there. He told me that one group of foreigners came one day, and paid him some money to take the plants away. He did not know from which country the people were.

The poor farmer is not to be blamed for what happened, after all he do not see the cacti the same as we, lovers of these plants, do: for him, it is just some spiny plants growing in the rocks, that can be found everywhere. If some people are willing to pay for those weeds, why not to accept?

I do not know if this form of M. ernestii is grown by many people. One thing for sure, the characteristic of branching cephalia was surely a genetic trait of this population, and plants grown from seed would develop the same characteristics.

John,

Nice to see you here! We had a great time in Chile indeed! But come on, at that time I was not used to that much alcohol, and trying to keep up with you guys was the reason I ended up a bit too happy every other evening!

For those interested in know what happend for John to have his trousers torn, I wrote an account of our adventure in the San Ramon Valley for the journal a few years ago. The name of the article is "A Copiapoa krainziana tale" and it was published in the June 2002 issue of the journal.

Well, thanks for all your messages!

All the best,

[Ernie]

Hi Marlon. Welcome to the forum.

I have a number of Melocacti ; A large Glaucescens, Bahiensis, Intotus and Neryi to name a few.

I live in the north of England where we suffer some severe frosts (last night the outside temperature went down to zero F but the greenhouse stayed at 50.

I think the problem with keeping Melocactus over winter in the UK is lack of waterering; my opinion for what it is worth is that when kept dry the plant drops it roots and then when watering regime is started in the spring there is no roots to take up the water and the plant eventually fails.

I have found that watering them from below during the winter keeps the roots and thus the plant.

I dont let the temperature drop below 50 and indeed the Glaucescens sits on top of my parafin heater. They also get plenty of light.

During the summer they get soaked quite regularly and seem to like that. I also spray them daily in hot weather.

I have no idea if what I do is technically correct or wise for others to follow but it works for me.